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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

Onion headlines aside*, we kinda do? This summer's European heatwave is due to emissions worldwide**; while the historical record has the early emissions from Europe, all the other inhabited continents have also contributed to it since then.

* https://theonion.com/solar-power-investment-skyrockets-upon-...

** There's also a big El Niño event, the Wikipedia page on the heatwave currently expressly denies that this contributed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_European_heatwaves

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>There's also a big El Niño event, the Wikipedia page on the heatwave currently expressly denies that this contributed

But isn't that accurate? The ENSO is a specific phenomenon in the Pacific and it's not clear to me how that would impact the EU in such a direct manner.

Yes, the main effect of a strongly positive ENSO on Europe may be a reduction in polar vortex instability, resulting in a milder, wetter, and more storm-prone winter.

But given the remoteness of the Pacific and all the other sources of variation in European weather, it's a fairly weak signal with lots of uncertainty (and there's no clear signal at all for summer weather).

> Onion headlines aside

Well technically speaking crude oil is a form of solar energy. (Sun -> plants -> animals -> crude oil)

What energy sources do we have that don't ultimately derive from either solar of radioactive decay? Residual heat from object formation perhaps.

> solar of radioactive decay

We can do fusion, but given the only large sources of that are fusion bombs and nobody wants a bomb-based power plant… :P

> nobody

[citation needed]. Project Pacer might be controversial and uneconomical, but still interesting.

OK, not *literally* nobody at the human level, just *metaphorically* nobody at the human level (or literally at the level of nations) given that even normal boring fission plants make voters stick their tongues out and complain.

Gravity, just ask Jupiters' Moons.

So tidal power, basically?

Yep

Post was flagged, likely because the ratio of comments. Single word contributions like this do not help.

The post being flagged has nothing to do with my comment, please don't sensationalise

Isn't solar derived from nuclear fusion?

Nukes for the win!

I guess you could see it that way but I don’t think that quite fits because the extra heat retention isn’t due to a failure in the solar power system, and was happening before those even existed. Maybe if there was something like a brushfire caused by someone’s system overheating?

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